News

SUSE LINUX President: "Leveraging Open Source in Your Enterprise Just Got a Whole Lot Easier."

"2004 will be the year of Linux. Novell's global sales and support channels provide tremendous new avenues to get Linux - and especially SUSE LINUX - to market. Leveraging open source in your enterprise just got a whole lot easier."

Richard Seibt, former CEO of SuSE, now joining Novell, January 13, 2004
[Seibt will continue to manage SUSE LINUX as President]

Novell CEO: "We've Been Doing Operating Systems for Twenty-some Years"

"If you look at what was of concern to CIOs, the first thing of concern was support. Heretofore, they saw a small company called Red Hat and a small company called SuSE, neither of which had much of a track record. And that gave them some discomfort. We have solved that problem because we have been doing operating systems for 20-some years."

Jack Messman, in an interview with CRN, January 13, 2004

Novell Becomes "One of the Strongest Options for Enterprise Linux Literally Overnight," Says CEO Messman

"Combining Novell's global presence and deep knowledge of enterprise software with SUSE LINUX's powerful technology makes Novell one of the strongest options for enterprise Linux literally overnight."

Jack Messman, chairman and CEO of Novell, January 13, 2004
[announcing completion yesterday of $210 million cash acquisition of SuSE]

 
 

Messman: Buying a Linux Distro 101

"There is a little bit of a story here. After we announced we were going to do Enterprise Linux Services [last March] and then made the Ximian acquisition, we soon found out that we needed to have a [Linux] distribution. So we said, 'we are as good as those guys are, why don't we go put it together ourselves?'

As a matter of fact the SCO thing had surfaced and we said hell we'll call it Kleenex. So we had the name. So Chris [Stone, vice chairman of Novell] put together a consortium of people rumored to be the Chicago 7. They liked our idea. They knew we had the capabilities. But after they all agreed that we would be ideal to do that they said 'why don't you guys go buy one, so we don't have three.' Red Hat was out of sight in terms of its valuation. And shortly after that conversation Suse became available. So we bought Suse."

Jack Messman, in an interview with CRN, January 13, 2004